


Every Day Is Like

by wintercoat



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-12
Updated: 2013-09-12
Packaged: 2017-12-26 08:23:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/963737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintercoat/pseuds/wintercoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Mac, let’s do something crazy today.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Day Is Like

Charlie liked to eat cookie dough for breakfast on Sundays. It was sticky and too sweet for the morning, but he liked it because he could taste it every time he ran his tongue over his teeth. That was his treat; a squidge of cookie dough washed down with whatever was left next to the arm of the couch. Today it was a dribble of bourbon and two mouthfuls of warm Coca Cola.

After breakfast activities were dependent on what Frank was doing, and he was out, so Charlie jerked off on their bed and fell asleep with his hand still in his pants and his face stuck to Rachel Ray in _TV Guide_.

A stale breeze rattled the blinds and woke him up. It was eleven thirty and hot. Charlie peered over the dry dead succulents on the windowsill down to the street below with his right arm tangled in the phone cord, waiting for Mac to answer.

Every Sunday, Mac picked up after five rings, and Charlie said, nose thick with dust and Ajax, “Mac, let’s do something crazy today.”

*

They drove around for an hour with the windows down, Charlie interfering with the vent on the A/C until Mac slapped his hand away and told him to put his seatbelt on.

Philadelphia rolled by, brown and blocky, rooftops shivering in the heat. Charlie stuck a hand out the window, tracing the rise and fall of the skyline with his fingers until Mac yelled at him for that too, because seriously, did he want to get his arm chopped off by a bus?

That would be pretty cool, actually. He could tell Mac was thinking it too.

*

What was that fucking thing called? Dayshavu? Charlie got dayshavu on Sundays. That French voodoo mindfuck shit happened to him every time he sat with his back to the slimy brick wall behind Dollar General, Mac crossed-legged next to him, rubbing the coolness of the shade from his bare arms. Dayshavu was in the patent grocery store air that smelled like dirt and old milk, and in the way Mac looked at him, fond or pissed or both, depending on how the day had gone.

“Pabst Blue Ribbon? Did your balls not drop yet?”

Charlie frowned and picked open the tab of the can. “Don’t bitch at me. It was the first thing I could get my hands on. That big black guy behind us looked like one of those fuckin’ store detectives.”

“He was blind, Charlie.”

Mac poked around some more in Charlie’s balled up jacket. “What else you get-- oh, great. Expired Twinkies. Great.”

“I told you, we were this close to security taking flight on our asses--”

“Okay, I get it. Remind me to never shoplift with you again, Jesus.”

“What? You said you were hungry. I’m fucking hungry, so.”

There was always a nice silence, then, after the inevitable argument that Mac always started, because trying to talk to Mac was like playing in traffic-- he got all PMS on you, steamrolling you with his nagging about some shit or ‘other, but that always fizzed out once food got involved.

The sky overhead had turned to a smooth gray. It looked heavy, and really close, almost like it was ready to come down on top of them. What was holding it up? Air? Charlie stared up at it, afraid to blink. Was he holding it up? Was his consciousness propping up the sky and space and the universe, expanding and empty, ready to expire and crush the world as soon as he stopped breathing?

“What is this,” said Mac slowly, “you look like you’re having a stroke or something.”

“Holy shit, have you tried Twinkies and beer together? Seriously, do it, it’s fucking crazy.”

*

Four o’clock they cruised through Fishtown and laughed at the crappy murals and a fat homeless guy asleep on the sidewalk, hot and thirsty, wasted on Pabst and whatever the shit was in those Twinkies.

Rain began to tap on the windshield. They pulled over on Beach Street and took a mutual beer-piss in the vast shock of weeds crawling onto the asphalt from the riverside. Mac pointed out the ghost of Petty Island, sat squat and white against the black horizon, so they zipped up and spat in the direction of New Jersey.

“This is. Us. We’re so fucking beautiful, man,” said Charlie.

“Yeah,” said Mac.

*

“Remember that girl at the tow yard? She was so into me.”

“She was like, thirteen.”

Mac fisted his hands in his stained Kiss shirt, sucking in his gut and scowling at the side of Charlie’s head. “So? So? Did you see her tits?”

“You wouldn’t have had a chance with her either way, dude. Come on.”

“Whatever Jim Lange, I guarantee you she wouldn’t have said no to sleeping with me. Just ‘cause you’re not getting any--”

“I get tail, sure. Plenty of it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Down, down at the strip mall I’m practically fighting them off,” said Charlie earnestly, gesturing to the hypothetical MILFs and college girls closing in from every direction.

Mac’s black eyebrows flatlined. “I have never seen you get pussy at the strip mall.”

“Well, no, not while you’re there, dude. You’ve got some rape-y gas station trucker vibes going on. You didn’t notice that the chicks in the food court won’t sit near you?”

“Right, right, and that has nothing to do with you at all,” said Mac hotly.

Charlie flung a piece of flint through a moss covered pane on the packing plant’s ground floor, scuffing back to knock Mac with his shoulder. “Smashing shit is cool. I’m cool. Just hop off my dick, man.”

Mac made a soft noise and flicked a chunk of brick through one of the high arching windows facing the river. The sound of glass breaking came back to them as a weird shimmer on the air, and that got a smile out of Mac, suddenly loose and cocky, swinging his big arms as he backed up to find another stone.

Charlie smiled too, wiped his wet neck and felt his pulse, a solid _bump bump bump_ against his fingers.

*

“Forget about the car for a minute, God.”

“You want to walk home Charlie? Fine. It’s your fault if it gets hotwired, okay.”

Charlie crouched in the grass and blinked sweat out of his eyes. “I feel like I need to piss.”

“You just went.”

Mac was looking anywhere but him, fingers skimming the waist of his Levi’s. Charlie ran a cautious hand over the front of his own pants, confirming that it was indeed wood and he wasn’t about to go potty like a dog in front of Mac. Unless Mac wanted him to. That wasn’t fucked up, right?

“Hey, Mac--”

“Look, no more talking. Come on.”

Yeah, no more talking, Charlie. Dick in mouth. Go.

Talking probably would make this a shitload more weird, but then, and there was that dayshavu thing again, Sundays were always weird. Like that song by that sad British dude on the jukebox, whining about silence and strange dust on faces, plunging the bar into a distant dead-eyed mood until someone rolled their eyes and put in a quarter for _Who’s Zoomin’ Who_.

Today Mac tasted like wet wipes and his hands smelled like Axe and motor oil. Sometimes he ran those hands, big soft hands, through Charlie’s hair and called him all kinds of gay-ass Hallmark card bull, because for Sunday afternoon they were A Thing and on weekdays Mac could just magically go back to hollering at girls in Logan Square. And wasn’t that some real Jekyll and Hyde shit?

“You’re supposed to-- you’ve got to move your head a bit more man, I’m not getting anywhere here.”

*

Afterwards Mac found enough change for a milkshake at the drive thru and they shared it on the freeway. Charlie sat with his legs tucked into his chest, absorbed in watching cars and motorcycles hurtle past. He waved at a fire truck, and they stared back. Mac tapped the thermometer on the dash and swerved into the express lane one-handed. “A/C’s fucked. Shit, and it’s like 100 degrees.”

Charlie butted his head on the seat and stared down his nose at the road ahead. “Do we have to go home? I don’t wanna go home yet.”

“You’ve got. Stuff. On you, Charlie. It’s all down your collar, I can see it from here. You can’t walk around looking like that.”

“It looks like toothpaste.”

“No! It doesn’t. Jesus, and stop flailing around, your pit stains are making me sick."

Charlie tossed the empty milkshake cup out the passenger window-- _“Charlie!”--_ and put his head in his arms. “My mouth still tastes like your jizz, by the way.”

*

“This is you,” said Mac, shoving Charlie out of the car with the heel of his boot. Charlie tripped onto the sidewalk, two beer cans rolling out after him and clinking into the gutter. He began to dig around in his jeans for his keys.

“Frank isn’t back yet, I can’t see a light on.”

Mac wiped his forehead on his bicep and said nothing.

“Come in for a minute,” mumbled Charlie, looking at his sneakers.

“There’s nowhere to park.”

“Pretend to limp. Y’know, act, like, disabled or something.”

“Who’s gonna see that?”

“Come _on_ , just--”

“No.” Mac reached over and yanked the passenger door shut. “Goodbye, Charlie.”

Charlie kicked in the tail light and ran inside before Mac could chase him.

The apartment stank of smoke from downstairs. Charlie drank tepid water straight from the cold tap, put the chain on the door and stripped off his shirt, grimy pants and underwear (still damp and sticky in the front) and crawled under the bedcovers. He stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, hands pinned under his butt. “You fucking fuck,” he said quietly.

A squad car coasted by under the window, lights on but no siren, red and blue sliding over the ceiling’s cracks and a patch of damp shaped like Michigan. Charlie rolled over and breathed in and out, slowly, attentive to the croak of every idling engine, until he closed his eyes and suddenly Frank was outside trying to get the chain off the door with a credit card.

The clock said four minutes past midnight.

“You been out today?” growled Frank, shuffling out of the bathroom and clicking off the lamp.

“Yeah. No.”

There was a rustle of covers and the sound of Frank fumbling with his glasses. “Geez. You’re butt naked under there, aren’t you. Pants on or get out.”

Charlie huffed, dug a pair of Batman boxers from under one of the cushions and wriggled into them. “What day is it,” he said suddenly.

“S-- uh, Monday. I guess. It’s tomorrow, isn’t it.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah, right. Shut up and go to sleep now.”

“You got anything for...”

“No. Fresh out.”

Charlie closed his eyes again. On Monday, he thought, he would wake up and have his second favorite breakfast: leftover pasta and whatever he could take out of Frank’s booze without him noticing.

Then he’d go out, see what was up with the world. Watch The Waitress grind coffee for a while with her sure small hands, wanting those hands all over him, which never failed to lead to a bit of tearful beating off in the bathroom stall, stifled on his own shirt.

Speaking of which, hopefully Mac wouldn’t factor into tomorrow at all, because God, he’d have to keep out of his way for a week or so. Which was impossible. He’d just wind up smoking with him on a street corner or flinching from the thugs at the basketball court, and he would just have to play it cool and hope he didn’t get his head busted open.

Maybe they’d just talk. And Mac, Mac would look right over his head at the tall blonde gliding beneath the shade of the trees some ways off.

Yeah.

Monday was Sunday with the brakes off, rolling down an incline on its way to Friday, torpedoing straight into Saturday, blacking out, and then, hey, it was Sunday again.

Dayshavu, man. It was a vicious fucking cycle.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for [houndsoflove](http://archiveofourown.org/users/houndsoflove/pseuds/houndsoflove), and she asked me several times to post it... I guess I finally worked up the courage to do so. I have seen a grand total of two IASIP episodes... oops. :'p Hopefully it's bearable to read either way?  
> p.s, I don't live in Philly, or indeed the USA, so apologies for my hasty research and vague approximations of what it's like to mooch around in this fair city.  
> Thanks for reading! :)


End file.
